The present invention relates to a printer of the type having at least one printing station, having a printer housing divided in a print carrier plane, with a lower housing part and a housing cover which can be placed on the lower housing part or lifted off the latter, the lower housing part holding a first group of functional components with a printing head which can travel in the print line direction, lower print carrier transport rollers interacting with transport roller abutments, and an ink ribbon system, in each case with their drive devices, and in the upper housing cover a second group of functional components with a printing abutment for the printing head. It should be noted that in the following the term "print carrier" is used for the respective material to be printed, which is preferably paper.
A design in which the printer is divided as described above on the one hand offers the possibility of making the housing cover exchangeable, in order to adapt the printer, for example, to different printing processes; and on the other hand, such a division makes access possible in a particularly favorable way to individual functional components in the case of service, for example to the paper transport channel in the case of a paper jam.
A printer is disclosed by DE 35 11 386 A1. In the case of this printer, two print carrier planes are provided in the lower housing part, which lie one above the other and for which there are in each case a printing head, a printing abutment and a paper transport device. This arrangement is intended to make it possible to equip the printer optionally with a plurality of printing stations, in order to be able to use it, for example, as a cash-till printer with a voucher printing station, a day-book printing station and a receipt printing station. The known printer uses as ink ribbon system an ink ribbon cassette which is inserted upright into the lower housing part in a lateral region. Due to the arrangement of two print carrier planes one above the other and the upright ink ribbon cassette, provided in the case of the known design, a high construction is obtained, which in turn has the consequence that the electrical and electronic functional components are distributed in an unfavorable way over the entire inner space of the printer housing, so that they have to be connected by means of cable harnesses to one another and to an electronic control device provided in the printer housing, which makes the installation and also the servicing of such a printer more difficult and more expensive.